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Spotlight 4 Success
Why Evidence Matters in EdTech
Ever wondered how educational tools and programs are evaluated to ensure they actually work? Dr. Rachel Schechter, founder of UXD Research, pulls back the curtain on this fascinating process during her conversation with Devin Pintozzi on Spotlight for Success.
Website: spotlight4success.com
Welcome to Spotlight for Success by American Book Company. I am Devin Pintosi, your host, and we are here at the ASCD ISTE conference on July 2nd and really enjoying the time here in sunny San Antonio. I have here is our special guest, dr Rachel Schechter. Thank you for joining us today. She is the founder of UXD Research and she has a lot of things to share today and we're so excited to have you here today, rachel.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much. So we do UX research? We do, but it's LXD Research.
Speaker 1:Oh LXD.
Speaker 2:Learning Experience Design. I named our company that because learning experiences happen within the classroom, outside the classroom, with technology, without technology, and what we do is we look at how programs are working and how to make them better in all different types of contexts.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's wonderful. Let's speak to those contexts. What kind of entities do you work with?
Speaker 2:So we partner with school districts and school leaders through the companies that they want to study. So, for example, if you're using a digital tool to help support your reading practice, your reading fluency practice, and you want to know well how well is this product working, we're using it three times a week. Is that enough time? Do we need to be using it more? Should we be using you know? Can we use it less and will it still work? The companies we partner with, the companies and yourself to kind of figure that out what is the dosage that leads to those gains and how big of gains are those gains?
Speaker 1:Wow, that is fantastic. You've gone so many directions with that. Can you share with us your journey on how you ended up going into this research track to help so many of these organizations out?
Speaker 2:You know it's so interesting to be around in ed tech at this time. So I went to UMass, amherst, and I studied with the founder of Children's Television Research, dr Dan Anderson. And not many people know this, but he actually invented Blue's Clues, oh, really, really Wow. And when I met him, my mind was blown. We can study how children learn from television, wow. So he helped set me up with an internship at the first and second season of Dora the Explorer. So I was at Nickelodeon, okay, going to 50th and Broadway, going up those stairs as a 20 year old little kid and I got to see the power of research, how one question, maybe even a word in a question, could be the difference between a whole group of kids yelling Yay me and crickets.
Speaker 1:Wow, that engagement is so critical right.
Speaker 2:It's so critical and unless you do the research, you know, with the kids we did three rounds of research for every step of the episode process, of which there were three.
Speaker 1:Wow, that is incredible. So it's like really taking an action or an idea and concepting like a narrative, exactly and seeing really pedagogically what is going to work based on numbers.
Speaker 2:Exactly, it was like prototype research at first and then it was kind of like alpha testing and then it was beta testing, and that was done for every episode of Dora the Explorer. So maybe it's not a mystery that hundreds of millions of children watched and loved that show. Wow. That is so incredible, yeah, so that was a pretty big high for 20 years old.
Speaker 1:I sure was.
Speaker 2:That's what you could imagine.
Speaker 1:That's amazing.
Speaker 2:So I went back to school and, you know, reality set in and I had to go get my first job. So I ended up actually working in arts administration for a little while and kind of left the television scene, just because not so easy to get a job in educational television. But I did ask the director of research how do I get your job? How do I become a director of research at Nickelodeon? And she said, rachel, you've got to go get your PhD because we are researchers. And I was like I always remembered that right.
Speaker 2:So after working in arts administration and being a teacher, being in the classroom, working with parents, I was like, yeah, I got to go back and see, really like get those answers to all of those questions that kept popping up in my head. And that's really what researchers are, right, we just are nonstop question askers and then we try to find that data to help answer the questions. So as I was finishing up my PhD, wow, the internet came about and suddenly CD-ROMs were connected to the internet and I was like, wow, that's neat.
Speaker 2:We can see what students are learning and measure it as they're learning. So embedded assessment. Okay, I was right there.
Speaker 1:Oh, nice yeah, Right on the ground level.
Speaker 2:Right on the ground level. So I looked for a position where I could be researching embedded assessment, and that's how I became eventually the director of research at Lexia Learning Wow, and I was there for eight years.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's amazing. Thank you, Wow, and you've kind of worked with some amazing partners over the years. Thank you for watching Spotlight for Success. I am Devin Pintosi, Chief Operating Officer of American Book Company. We are located here in our headquarters in Woodstock, Georgia. All of our materials are printed in USA. We have course books, e-books and online testing in grades K-12 in mathematics, ELA, science and social studies. These materials are all designed to help students achieve higher scores on their state-specific high-stakes assessments. We guarantee score improvement. You can get free samples of our materials either in print or in electronic formats at abck12.com. We look forward to hearing from you.
Speaker 2:We look forward to hearing from you. Oh yeah, really incredible and really, with Lexia, I was able to work with just school districts of all sizes, learning about what kind of data they were interested in. I was the internal creator of all the assessments at Lexia and then, for then, I wanted to work for more companies. I mean, that was the main thing. I wanted to see how lots of products worked, and not just in literacy, because I came from, you know, studying all different subjects, and that's what brought me to HMH and I was the vice president of learning sciences at HMH as they were kind of working on their digital transformation.
Speaker 1:Wonderful, wow. And so you're here at SDA, scd. What kind of things are you hoping to get out of the sessions here?
Speaker 2:Well, I actually led my team. I brought three team members. I ran into someone. They were kind of shocked. So four team members from LXD Research were here presenting research. We were discussants for other research sessions. We had five research sessions where we were the discussants for the sessions. I also co-led and facilitated a table at the ISTE co-design workshop, nice. We were with Padlet, we were at the Padlet table. So I mean we work with them on their ISTE seal.
Speaker 1:Oh great.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it was really really nice to you know, to be with a client and talk to educators about new features that they're working on, and that's really why I was hitting the exhibit floor here today, because I wanted to talk to all different companies about their research journey and to be a resource.
Speaker 1:That's great.
Speaker 2:I have a YouTube channel with free videos that I produce.
Speaker 1:Wow, what does that YouTube handle?
Speaker 2:Oh, it's LXDResearch at YouTube and it's really quick less than five-minute videos about research. What does educational research look like? What's the terminology? When someone says SL, level 3, what does that mean? And it's both to help the companies, but also the educators know how to ask about research and to understand it. That's great, but also the educators know how to ask about research and to understand it.
Speaker 1:That's great, and I understand it's not only that you're working on this research, that you work to make sure that that research is also certified by other third parties. Is that right?
Speaker 2:You got it Just like in the olden days, when researchers would submit for publication right. That was the moment where the experts would review the study that they did. We're moving at a much faster pace in education. Right now I have three papers that are currently waiting review in research journals, some I've been waiting for over six months to find out if they might want to publish it or might want me to revise it. We don't have that kind of time here in education these products are out and they're in classrooms now.
Speaker 2:So we actually focus on rapid cycle evaluation and because of that, all of our research is externally reviewed by a nonprofit partner.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's so wonderful, that is so great and that's you know, just shows. It shows the rigor involved in the research that you're doing. You get to help so many school districts and companies to find those best practices.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and it's called EduEvidenceorg, and whatI really like about it is that's international.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow.
Speaker 2:So they've taken the ed tech research requirements from many different countries and actually have put together an international council on what ed tech quality looks like and what the research should look like, and so we actually are their official, an official US partner. Wow, so that way, anything anybody who works with us and does research with us, our work is fast-tracked to get certified.
Speaker 1:That is so wonderful. That's a great action that's going on with your research, thank you. So let me ask you do you have anything you'd like to share with the ISTE community, as they're completing the sessions and everything here today?
Speaker 2:Absolutely Well. The last time I was at ISTE was two years ago and a lot of the folks on the floor told me that the educators were not asking about research. So it makes it difficult for me to say that research is important to the educators if the educators aren't asking about research. Great news Many more people are asking about research this conference than there have in the past and I would say keep asking. Asking, because if you're not asking about the research that's been conducted, or even you know, were teachers involved in making the product? Were those teachers involved in the user research, making sure that's meeting their needs. As it's being designed, these things should be transparent, written down, documented, validated by a third party. It is not difficult to do, it's not expensive to do, but a lot of the companies don't do it.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's something you definitely can't afford not to do. It's very important to get the research done. There's so many people that need to see the numbers and need to see that there's been some verification, exactly.
Speaker 2:So, even if you're nervous that you might not understand the research yourself, if someone explained it to you kind of on the spot, ask for the paper, ask for the website and you can always look at it later. Another great tip there are AI tools where you can upload a research study and it explains it to you.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's so nice, because some of those researchers go way over everybody's head. Oh my gosh, me too.
Speaker 2:Like I can barely understand it. I'm starting to do it. I was like hey, chatgbt, can you summarize this for me or make like a little presentation for me? Like as if you were the researcher presenting this to a group of educators.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:And that's your prompt.
Speaker 1:Wow, that is such a great thing that you're doing there.
Speaker 2:So tell us again what is the name of your website. It's lxdresearchcom, and on the website there are everything I just mentioned and also I have like an alphabet soup article to tell you about all the different research organizations and for companies, how to get SS certified. I have videos and articles all for free and all available through my website.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's so awesome, or our website. That's so great. Again, this is Dr Rachel Schechter with LXD Research. Thank you so much for joining us today.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for having me.